Conversation with Dr James Alison on the Vatican's 'Responsum' to same gender blessings

Dr James Alison discusses the Vatican's Responsum to same-gender blessings.

James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. He has studied, lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Spain and the United States as well as his native England. James earned his doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1994 and is a systematic theologian by training.

Alison is encouraged by people's response around the world saying that even a good number of party-line people, including many bishops who have been very supportive to the point where he thinks the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has 'shot itself in the foot' by the stance they've taken.

Alison says the conversation around same-sex blessings is horizontal of nature; between people, however, the Vatican's involvement is an attempt to make a vertical absolutism, an interject, into what essentially is a horizontal conversation.

It just doesn't work.

James Alison says the Vatican's vertical involvement of what Natural Law is, runs counter to the nature of Natural Law; our understanding grows and retreats. Simple answers become silly.

Normal Catholic people have a better understanding of Natural Law than the Vatican does.

James Alison talks about Pope Francis calling him on the phone to tell him that he has "power of the keys".

James Alison talks with Dr Joe Grayland, Professor Tom O'Donnell, and Fr Michael Kelly SJ.

0:00 Introduction.
0:46 Vatican's Responsum as a tantrum, a trump card mischaracterizes a horizontal dialogue with a vertical interjection.
2:40 Authority and Natural Law.
9:06 Alison is encouraged by the response to the Responsum, with more positive than negative coming from this.
13:57 What's happening in the pontificate of Francis.
15:44 Pope Francis give James Alison the "power of the keys".

James Alison is known for his firm but patient insistence on truthfulness in matters gay as an ordinary part of basic Christianity, and for his pastoral outreach in the same sphere.

"In trouble" for his pastoral outreach, the Congregation for the Clergy dismissed him from the clerical state, forbidding him from teaching, preaching, or presiding.

However, on 2 July 2017, Pope Francis called Alison directly telling him, "I want you to walk with deep interior freedom, following the Spirit of Jesus. And I give you the power of the keys".

Alison understood from this that Pope Francis did not perceive the congregation's decision as binding; that he treated him as a priest giving him universal jurisdiction to hear confessions and preach, the two faculties traditionally associated with the power of the keys.

Alison noted that this was how Pope Francis had acted towards those he appointed as "Mercy Priests" During the 2016 Jubilee of Mercy.